In a server apparatus including multiple functional components such as a Web server, an application server, and a database server, there are cases where a group of functional components need to be started or stopped. Here, when dependency exists between processes performed by the functional components to be started or stopped, it is necessary to start or stop the functional components in an appropriate order. If the functional components are started or stopped in an inappropriate order, problems may occur. For example, an unexpected error message may be output to a monitor or the started functional components may not function normally.
There exists an application management program for managing a system where multiple applications installed in separate server computers collaborate with each other to provide a service (see, for example, WO 2006/043321). The application management program selects the server computers whose applications are to be started or stopped according to an order of starting applications which is predefined based on the dependency of processes. For example, the application management program requests a Web server, an application server, and a database server in the order mentioned to stop their applications.
There also exists a communication message sorting program that extracts sender and destination addresses and sender and destination port numbers from communication messages to identify highly-correlated server apparatuses and identifies a system composed of the server apparatuses as a multilevel system (see, for example, WO 2009/011063).